Leadership / 06.26.24
A Ticketing Pro Has Truly Bloomed at Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group
Teddy Durgin
This story is brought to you by the INTIX Women in Entertainment Technology Program.
Rebecca “Becca” Bloom’s journey to her current job as Senior Revenue and Ticketing Analyst for Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group began back when she was an undergraduate at Russell Sage College. She originally was a dual major in dance and business, but she discovered that she really enjoyed studying business. She also wanted to graduate with the possibility of a steady income.
Becca Bloom
Russell Sage offered a bachelor’s in arts management, so she switched and thus began a fascinating career in ticketing and live events that has included stints as Box Office Manager and Senior Director of Ticketing for House of Blues, Operations Manager in Southern California for Ticketmaster, and sales analyst for the Blue Man Group in Orlando. Cirque du Soleil had acquired Blue Man Group a few years before COVID hit. “So, when they needed an analyst, I applied and that’s where I am now,” she says. “Cirque du Soleil’s main office is in Las Vegas, but I get to work from home in Orlando.”
In her current position, she has come to especially enjoy the revenue management side — i.e., figuring out how to maximize revenue. “It’s really about looking at house scaling, dynamic pricing and promotions,” she notes. “What prices should we charge? When should we offer certain promotions? How should dynamic pricing work? It’s the numbers and data side of ticketing. It’s about drilling down and really understanding how ticketing works.”
She adds, “A lot of dynamic pricing started with sports, realizing you could get more money for certain games than others. That has slowly trickled into a lot of venues now where, say, they’ll charge more for weekends than weekdays. Or they’ll charge more for this seat than that seat.”
Much of Bloom’s analysis is also focused on seasonality. She works with venues in different cities, and each city is different. “Their seasonality is different,” she says. “Their tourism is very different. The time of day can even factor in. If you’ve always had a show at 8 o’clock, and sales are starting to drop, maybe the show should change the start time? I still work a lot with box offices and with sales and marketing pondering such questions. And because the data is changing so much, I am having to learn new things all of the time. It’s a challenge to keep up.”
Bloom has built a reputation over the years for having an excellent eye for talent and for being a top-notch trainer of that talent. She often uses stories and anecdotes to prove her points or deliver key pieces of instruction.
One of her favorites: “There’s a little girl watching her mother cook a ham. The mom cuts off a quarter of the ham and puts it in the oven. The little girl asks, ‘Why do you do that?’ And the mom answers, ‘I actually don’t know. My mother always did that.’ So, they go to the little girl’s grandmother and ask, ‘Why do you do that?’ And she didn’t know! So, they all then asked the great-grandmother. And she replied, ‘Because I had a really small oven!’ I’ve always loved that story because it shows that people can get into a rut of doing things over and over again, and they don’t realize why they’re doing them. They should really ask, ‘Is the reason still needed?’ Indeed, should we still start shows at 8 p.m. just because it’s how they have started for years? Are Mondays and Tuesdays still the best ‘dark days’ of the week for the theater?’”
Another favorite story she uses to illustrate what she has learned and what others could learn from her is: “A young CEO is walking in to take over for an old CEO. As the old CEO is walking out, the young CEO asks, ‘What do I need to do to do this job correctly?’ And the old CEO says, ‘You need to be successful?’ ‘Yeah, but how do I do that?’ ‘You need to learn.’ ‘And how do I best do that?’ ‘You need to fail!’ I try to let new managers and staff know, ‘You are going to mess up. You’re going to make mistakes. But you will learn from those, and that’s how you will get better. That’s how you will get great in your job!’”
When asked if she had any advice for young women reading this just starting in the ticketing and live events space, she prefaced her reply by noting how different things are now than they were when she was in her 20s and just starting out in the 1990s. “Working at House of Blues was mainly men back then. I think I had to feel like I had to work harder and try harder because I was a woman. And if I made a mistake, I felt like it lingered over me. Luckily, those days are mostly gone. I don’t think they’re completely gone. But I see women moving up easier and quicker than when I was younger.”
She continues, “There are benefits to being a woman. We are different than men, and we should own that. We’re more nurturing, and I think that is what made me a really good manager. I cared a lot about my staff, and it made me a better coach to them. I didn’t have a lot of turnover because I took care of them.”
Looking ahead to the second half of 2024, Bloom says she feels “mixed” about where ticketing and live events are headed. Not only is this an election year, but the industry is still rebounding from the effects of the pandemic. “Since coming back from COVID, we’re seeing people going earlier to shows than later,” she concludes. “We’re seeing people either having the money to get really good seats or buying the least expensive, and then there’s this sort of gap in the middle. There’s also a lot of entertainment opening in a lot of different places, so there’s a lot of competition. It always comes down to ‘share of time and share of wallet.’”
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Tags: Leadership , Women in Ticketing